Cruel
by StoneWingedAngel
Summary: Douglas knows what air pressure can do to cracked ribs. All he has to do is get Ruth and her grandson to believe it.


**Warnings: I have deviated slightly from the canon of Helsinki in removing Ruth's husband from the aeroplane. Assume he was left at the airport too. Sorry Philip.**

* * *

Douglas Richardson, when he was nervous, always put his weight on the balls of his feet, rocking toward to intercept whatever disaster was throwing itself his way. He was not a man who usually got nervous. Working for MJN had desensitised him to almost all forms of apprehension, even those that would make the more ordinary of people want to smash their heads repeatedly against a blunt surface. He didn't think he'd stood on the balls of his feet since his first divorce, and even that didn't really count – he'd been sitting down at the time, so putting his weight forward had been near-impossible.

Nevertheless, he was nervous now, and his feet betrayed him. The betrayal was hidden from whoever might by watching by his smooth shoes – a birthday present to himself – but he could feel it. He was anxious.

_Fool_, he thought as he brought his hand up to the door and pressed the bell, already hoping they wouldn't be in. It rang out with a shrill, irritating rendition of a pop song he might have heard in a shop not long ago. _No need to be nervous_.

But there was need to be nervous. The last time he'd seen them one of them had been covered in chocolate sludge. At the time it had been ridiculous enough to border on hilarious. Leaving them at the airport had been a necessity as much as it had been what they _wanted _to do – if they'd let them on the plane someone would have likely committed murder before they'd made it ten minutes out of Helsinki.

He heard footsteps from behind the door, stepped back a pace and braced himself, forcing his feet flat onto the ground.

"If you're selling anything I don't want-have I seen you somewhere before?"

Ruth, even after she recognised him, continued to glare suspiciously, as if he were about to whip out a knife and attempt to remove her intensities at his leisure. Douglas sighed.

"First Officer Douglas Richardson. We met when Arthur arranged-"

"Oh yes." Ruth interrupted him with a sniff. "_That_. You can tell Carolyn that I'm not apologising."

"I'm not here for Carolyn."

"Then why are you here, you stupid man?"

Douglas took a deep breath and tried to ignore the way her voice, clipped and regular, too regular, grated on his nerves.

"I'm here for Martin."

"The child abuser?"

"He didn't-"

"Because if you think I'm going to apologise to him you can leave right now! I won't tolerate being bothered in my own house by-"

Douglas silenced her by opening his mouth and simply talking over the top of her. She was, he had to admit, a very vocal woman, but Douglas had spent a good proportion of his youth attending medical school parties. He knew how to talk loudly if he needed.

"Martin has just got out of a hospital. In Sweden."

Ruth paused for only the briefest of seconds before she was off again. "I don't see why you have to tell _me _that."

Douglas took a deep breath, letting his tongue curl under the assault of the cold air. "Your grandson put him in the hospital."

"What?" This came from behind the half-closed door, and someone else appeared in the gap. Douglas felt his stomach drop with distaste, although he kept up the valiant effort of remaining calm. Kieran, despite what he'd heard, looked more interested than ashamed, or even concerned. "_I _did?"

"You hit him. Four times." It was the four times that had got to him – once, perhaps, would have been acceptable. Martin, ass that he was, probably had it coming. But four was excessive. Four was cruel.

"He hit me first! You were there, you saw it! I was allowed to. It was self-defence."

"Martin couldn't knock the skin off a rice pudding, and you know it!" Douglas retorted, already angry – he hadn't planned on getting angry. "He'd have tripped over his own feet before he got the first punch in."

"This is nonsense," Ruth said brusquely. "I've heard quite enough – I don't give a damn what's happened to your child-abuser of a pilot. My grandson never hit him that hard. He was provoked."

"Do you know what air pressure does to cracked ribs?"

Douglas let the statement hover, like a confused bird, in the air for a few seconds. Ruth and Kieran looked at him blankly. The silence allowed his thoughts to spiral; when he blinked he could see the control panel again. He'd spent the flight with his eyes glued to it, unable to turn around in case they went off-course, able only to hear what was happening. Martin's gasping, Arthur's high-pitched panicking, Carolyn's desperate attempts to keep them calm.

It had started very suddenly. Martin had put a hand to his chest, inhaling roughly. Carolyn and Arthur, busy trying to extricate twenty cigarettes from a fish cake, hadn't noticed, but Douglas had. He was good at noticing things, especially when those things concerned the people he cared about.

"Douglas…" Martin had jerked in his seat as he inhaled, going pale. His lips had had a grey tinge to them, like lipstick in a black-and-white movie. "I can't breathe…I can't…breathe…"

"Martin?"

Martin had inhaled again and let out a soft cry that had dragged Arthur and Carolyn away from their cigarette-based activity. "I don't…I can't…" He'd trailed off, panting, eyes half closed as he slumped back in his seat, nostrils flared in panic.

"Martin, calm down," Douglas had murmured. It had seemed like an odd time for Martin to have a panic attack, but he knew how to deal with them; one of his ex-girlfriends had suffered from anxiety in crowded spaces. "Breathe in for five, hold it for two, and then breathe out again."

Martin had nodded, taken a deep breath, and stopped abruptly. "You don't understand. I can't. I can't breathe properly."

"Mum? What's going on?"

"I don't know Arthur, be quiet dear…"  
"Carolyn, get Martin laid flat. We're diverting."

"Jesus…"

"Sweden, this is golf-echo-romeo-tango-india, requesting diversion – one of our pilots is having severe difficultly breathing…"

"You'll be fine, Martin, don't worry."

"I can't breathe…"

"I know, we're diverting."

"Douglas, are his lips supposed to be that colour?"

"I can't leave the controls, Arthur, tell me what colour."

"Sort of…blue…"

"I can't breathe."

"I know, Martin."

"Please…"

Douglas dragged himself, with considerable force, back to the present. He didn't know how long he'd been standing on the doorstep, remembering snatches of conversation from a time that had passed by in such a panicked blur he didn't know whether he was imagining them or not. Martin's gasping; he hadn't imagined that. Unable to turn from the control panel, the sounds of the event had engrained themselves permanently in his memory.

Ruth was eyeing him like a slug she was about to pour salt on. Kieran's look was much the same.

"Go on, then," he said. "Tell us what air pressure does when you've got cracked ribs."

_Ribs you cracked_, Douglas thought. God knew why Martin hadn't said how much it had hurt. Pride, probably. Damn him. Damn his pride.

"The volume of gas increases. Oxygen decreases."

Kieran rolled his eyes. "I _know _that. I play flight simulator for four hours every-"

Douglas held up a hand. "Let me finish." He scrubbed a hand over his face, accidently catching his cheek with a nail and leaving a stripe of dull soreness next to his nose. "Normally, on a flight, you don't notice it. But when someone's experienced a physical trauma, like pneumothorax-"

"Like what?"

"Pneumothorax. Air pressing on the outside of the lung. It normally heals by itself, especially in a healthy young man. But combine that with the air pressure and the person can't get enough oxygen. Hypoxia. Blood becomes starved of oxygen; they go into shock, they can even go into cardiac arrest." He shivered. It had nothing to do with the coldness of the air. "The colour changes are the worst thing; red in the face, then pale, then blue and grey." He was getting carried away and he knew it, but he could still hear Carolyn shouting at him across the flight deck. "And then if you do nothing, you've got a corpse."

Ruth's mouth had sagged in shock, but she recovered quickly. "Do be quiet! You'll give the poor boy nightmares!"

Douglas felt something inside his chest judder and snap, and then he was shouting. "Martin can be a pompous git and he was wrong to lash out but he did not deserve to die for it!" He snorted air through his nose with ugly vigour. "Have you any idea what we went through up there – all of us? Arthur nearly died panicking. Your _sister _had to deal with a one-manned plane and a pilot who was lying on her floor, begging her to 'let' him breathe! And me…well…"

He had to stop there; he couldn't recount what he'd felt. He couldn't even remember it properly. There hadn't been many instances in his life when he'd be scared so witless he'd forgotten what had happened.

Kieran had his arms folded, although he looked a little paler than usual; his shoulders were slumped.

"Are you suing us?"

Douglas brought his attention back to Ruth with an unpleasant jolt, feeling something in his sore, tired neck click as he turned. "What?"

"I can't see any other reason why you're here. That'd be just like Carol." Douglas winced at the mispronunciation of her name. "My grandson does something by mistake, and she jumps at the chance to scrounge money for her tin-pot little enterprise."

"Carolyn doesn't know I'm here. And neither does Martin," Douglas murmured. He was starting to get tired with this; how Carolyn had lived with this woman for years was beyond him. Then again, he couldn't imagine either of them as children in the first place. The whole thing was very surreal. "I just came here to…tell you that you can't attack people without some kind of consequence." He shrugged. "I wanted to stop it happening to anyone else. You might kill them next time."

"I don't believe you! You're trying to get evidence against us! Well, let me tell you, my grandson was perfectly within his rights to-"

"Grandma…"

"Kieran, I'm busy…"

"Grandma!"

Ruth turned to him, exasperated. "What?"

"Douglas is right." Kieran's voice had lost some of the manly bravado Douglas remembered; it was more boyish, more vulnerable. It didn't particularly suit him.

"_What_?"

"I said, Douglas is right."

Douglas waited for elaboration, but as the seconds slid by at an agonisingly slow pace, he came to realise that the short statement was all he was going to get. Ruth was stunned; Kieran sullen. No-one was saying anything else, that was clear.

"Right," he said. "I'll…go."

Ruth and Kieran watched him all the way to the car; he could feel their eyes on his back like lasers. Lasers of death. It felt like something out of one of Arthur's favourite movies.

His car started with a smooth purr, and he reached for his phone as it began to ring.

"_Douglas? Martin's sister's had to go back to work, and she wanted one of us to help Martin get his dinner ready. Where are you?_"

He sighed. "At the other end of the country. It'll take me a few hours to get back."

"Why on _earth_ are you at the other end of the country?"

"Long story. You're on Martin duty now; I'll swap you with the night shift."

Carolyn sounded suspicious when she next spoke; he could imagine her narrowed eyes. "You aren't a hundred and fifty miles at the other end of the country, are you?"

Douglas smirked. "I don't know what you're talking about."

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**I've loved Cabin Pressure for a while, but I've held back from writing (despite lots of ideas) because the characters feel very different to what I'm used to. This was sort of a test run, for Douglas at least. I also apologise for any medical inaccuracy; most of the sites I found were quite technical, and I found them very hard to follow. I hope this wasn't too disappointing!**

**Thanks for reading, reviews welcome!**

**The end. **


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